The organizer of the Little Italy Festival, which moved to Rochester from Gates after money and political hassles there, now has been sued by the city over an unpaid bill.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in state Supreme Court, Rochester accused the Little Italy Festival Association of failing to pay a $5,483 invoice for police services at its first city-based fete last summer.

The suit also asks that the organizer return $4,000 in financial support the city provided the festival.

Festival impresario Silvano Orsi said Thursday the lawsuit was without merit and called on the city to withdraw it.

The festival, featuring food, drink, music and other entertainment, was held Aug. 12-13 on a city-owned site along the Genesee River across from the Civic Center. A related Catholic mass and procession was held at a church in Corn Hill.

It was billed as the first Italian festival in the city in 30 years.

Orsi also began an effort last year to reinvigorate one of Rochester's historic Italian-American communities by carving out a Little Italy centered on Lyell Avenue. The city government has been a partner in that undertaking.

City officials also welcomed the festival, which drew thousands to the downtown site last August. The organization's Facebook page features a photo of Orsi hugging Mayor Lovely Warren on the festival stage.

The Warren administration provided $4,000 to support the Little Italy Festival, according to the city's legal filing. In return, the filing asserted that Orsi signed an agreement that included a promise to pay for police and other services related to the festival.

It's customary for organizers of festivals, concerts and other large public events to pay for a contingent of Rochester police to direct traffic and watch over attendees.

But Orsi did not sign a second contract that spelled out the cost of the police contingent, the papers alleged.

The city provided officers for portions of the festival nonetheless. The legal filing said city officials have sent Orsi three demands for payment, and also have asked for the return of the $4,000 grant.

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But Orsi said the original agreement was invalid, and the entity named in the lawsuit — the neighborhood association — is not the group that put on the festival.

He also said he provided his own security, and that city police failed to show up for portions of the festival when he had wanted them present.

Orsi, a Gates resident, suggested the Warren administration was demanding the $9,400 in retaliation for several actions.

For one, he recently endorsed Adam McFadden's congressional candidacy, though Warren favors someone else. For another, he supported the operators of Capelli Sport Stadium in a recent dispute with City Hall.

The festival, held in a town park, had been a success. But town officials and others had raised questions about its finances and the donation of proceeds to charity.

Orsi insisted that the festival's finances were in order, and said he had to subsidize the 2016 gathering with his own money. He suggested that he'd antagonized Gates' Republican establishment by running, unsuccessfully, for the town board as a Democrat in 2016.

Asked if the legal dispute might cause the city to withhold permits for the 2018 festival, city spokeswoman Jessica Alaimo noted the fete is to be held in Capelli Sport Stadium and needs no permit.

She declined to comment on any of Orsi's statements.

This year's gathering is scheduled for June 16, according to the group's Facebook page.